


But It's Written in the Starlight

by Lily_Padd_23



Category: The West Wing
Genre: 2018, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of Death, Post-Series, Seaborn For President, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 17:44:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17187509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily_Padd_23/pseuds/Lily_Padd_23
Summary: A glimpse of Josh and Sam's life today.  An important decision.





	But It's Written in the Starlight

But It's Written in the Starlight  
By Lily Padd

 

December 27, 2018

_“…as have blood, liver, and nervous system failures. Serious allergic reactions, including…”_

Sam Seaborn snapped the clicker at the TV to turn down the volume on the seemingly unending list of side effects, not lifting his head from the article on his laptop before him. He sat, his legs tucked under the blankets, propped against a pillow and the headboard, peering through his glasses at a _Guardian_ story about an Institute of Directors survey in the UK.

            “Honey, have you read this?” he called in the direction of the bathroom. The sound of the flush came and went, and was quickly followed by a too-fast spray of the sink. Josh stepped out of the bathroom and back into their bedroom in a pair of baggy blue boxer shorts, thick-framed black glasses, and an old _Seaborn for Congress_ t-shirt, the sports section tucked beneath his arm.

            “For the _life_ of me,” he gave Sam a familiar look from the doorframe, eyes wide in fake irritation, his shock of white-grey hair glinting as he turned off the bathroom light behind him, “I will never understand how you think I will know what you’re referring to when you ask if I’ve read something _that I cannot see_.”

Sam squared his eyes, and flipped the laptop around, reciting, “57% percent of surveyed business owners in the UK think that Brexit will make the economy _worse_.”

Josh padded to his side of the bed, quirking up a sarcastic eyebrow, lifting his bare feet quickly from the cold hardwood floor. “They’re just realizing this now?”

            “I’m surprised that still fits you,” Sam said, gesturing his eyes at the _Seaborn for Congress_ shirt. Josh ignored him. It was from his first race for the California 47th, the special election he was never supposed to win, the one that had knocked the wind out of him anyway and sent him with his tail between his legs to a ritzy law firm until he could find the fire for politics again. It never went away that time.

            “That number is up since last quarter,” Sam went on, turning his laptop back to him and beginning to read the list of statistics on the lack of optimism about the economy in a post-Brexit Britain.

            “It makes you wonder,” Josh climbed into bed next to Sam, “If they were not considering their livelihoods, the state of the economy, and the prosperity of the free market, what they _were_ considering when they voted in favor.”

            “Immigrants,” Sam said with a sigh, “Scary, scary starving immigrants from Syria.”  He exited the tab, pulling up an article on gerrymandered districts in the midterms.

Josh let out a huff of agreement and flipped open his newspaper, looking for the article he had been reading on the toilet. Something about The Cardinals.

            “They’re saying that only 48% of North Carolinians voted for a Republican candidate, but Republicans will make up nearly 60% of the new state legislature,” Sam synthesized as he read, the crinkles around his eyes deepening like the lines in his forehead.

            “Gerrymandering’s a bitch,” Josh sighed.

            “If the results actively reflected the demographics in North Carolina, Democrats would hold over half of North Carolina’s US House seats,” Sam went on, “You know how many there are now?”

            “How many?” Josh half listened.

            “Three,” Sam responded.

            “Out of what?” Josh asked, trying to remember.  A pause fell as Sam thought, then skimmed the screen, unable to find the answer in either his memory or the article.

            “Thirteen,” Sam’s tone was confident, but his eyes said it as more of a question.

            “Twelve,” Josh recalled casually.

            “Thirteen!” Sam corrected, shutting his computer and turning to Josh. He yanked on the sleeves of his grey Duke sweatshirt, suddenly feeling very defensive that he could not have possibly pulled that number out of thin air.

            “Twelve!” Josh looked at him through his glasses, eyebrows raised.

            “I’m pretty sure it’s thirteen,” Sam said, "Because they have fifteen electoral votes, right?  Subtracting two senators, it would have to be thirteen."

Josh slammed his newspaper into his lap and tilted his head up shouting, “Alexa, how many electoral votes does North Carolina have?” at the little black box on Sam’s bedside table. The blue ring flashed for a moment and then beeped off. “Alexa!” Josh repeated, “How many electoral votes does North Carolina have?”

 _“I’m sorry, I do not understand the question,”_ the robotic monotone replied. Josh had always had a bit of a problem with the machine understanding him.

            “Alexa!” Sam said, “How many electoral votes does North Carolina have?”

For a minute, they stared at the unresponsive device, Josh propped on one elbow, looking at it over Sam’s shoulder, Sam still leaning back on the headboard.

            “Alexa!” Josh shouted, waiting for the ring of acknowledgment.

            “Alexa!” Sam cried again when it did not appear, muting the TV to decrease competing sounds.

            “Alexa!” Josh said again, overlapping Sam, “How many electoral votes does North Carolina have?”

_“I’m sorry, I do not understand the question.”_

            “Alexa!” Sam repeated in choppy syllables, “How many electoral votes does North Carolina have?”

The top of the circle illuminated before the computer tone finally regurgitated, _“The state of North Carolina has fifteen electoral votes.”_

            “HA!” Sam spun around, pointing a finger in Josh’s face. “That means thirteen House seats!"

            “It used to be twelve,” Josh resigned, his lips curling. Absentmindedly, he twisted the gold wedding band on his ring finger as Sam rattled on about how many seats of North Carolina’s General Assembly, House of Representatives, and Senate should be occupied by Democrats were it not for gerrymandered districts.

Every now and then, the enormity of little moments like this struck Josh with such ferocity, that he couldn’t help but just bask in the fervent glow of his husband. The fact that he could take these mundane moments completely for granted sometimes floored him. They had been through an awful lot together, to say the very, very least: campaigns, the Bartlet years as Deputy Chief of Staff and Deputy Communications Director, a shooting, more campaigns, long distance, the Santos years as Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff, Sam’s tenure in Congress, being outed and losing re-election after one term, just to name a few.

Now, it was slowly closing in on a decade since either of them had held political office, but they had never left DC, the city where they fell in love, not just with each other, but also with DC. Sam had taken a professorship at Georgetown Law School. He often wrote guest pieces for the New York Times and Washington Post, had all kinds of prime time interviews, was a highly sought after lecturer at universities, and always had a slot at the DNC. He had written a bestseller and had a wildly successful publicity tour, sound bites from talk shows going viral every few weeks. And every election cycle, he was out throwing his support behind down ballot candidates to talk about their pro-LGBTQ+ record.  

Josh, on the other hand, was staying quietly behind the scenes, running the Bartlet Foundation, which had made hundreds of millions of dollars for medical research. Neither had thirsted much to be back in the White House. That part of their life was behind them, they were getting to make change in a new way, and they were both pretty content with where they were now. Though, occasionally, Sam had to quell the intrusive voice in his head of his old boss— more than that, his hero— Jed Bartlet, telling him he would run for President someday.  And Josh couldn’t help but yearn to get back in the fight, fists swinging. Particularly now. 

Neither of them had said much about it to the other. They didn’t really have to. Sam’s name had already begun to cross the lips of pundits in lists of potential 2020 challengers. He would usually laugh when he heard it either on the news or as a question directed at him in interviews or question and answer sections. He’d brush it off, not dwelling on it in his mind but to say to himself, “Maybe if things were different.”

But things were different now, Josh thought, listening to Sam read off today’s Dow Jones projections. They couldn’t just sit back and let this happen. They couldn’t just sit back and live normal ex-politician lives when nothing about politics was normal anymore. As Sam concluded his stock market ramble, Rachel Maddow came back from a commercial break, and Josh turned the sound back on the TV as she began her coverage of the government shutdown. Sam closed his laptop again, taking the clicker to continue turning up the volume, settling in to hear the segment. Josh readjusted against his pillow, listening to what Maddow had to say, but his mind kept floating away from him and to a campaign bus on an unknown stretch of highway.

_“I can’t tell you when the Government’s gonna be open. I can tell you it’s not gonna be open until we have a wall, a fence, whatever they’d like to call it…”_

            “God, no, God, make it stop!” Josh flung back into focus at the sound of the President’s voice, scrambling the clicker out of Sam’s hand to shut the television off. He could never get through even a few seconds of listening to his voice, particularly from the Oval Office. Particularly from the West Wing. Particularly from anywhere. Sam stifled a chuckle at his husband’s outburst, pulling his laptop back up, flicking through the tabs and tabs of articles he opened but hadn’t read throughout the day. He finally landed on the CNN article— the one he had been trying to brace himself to read for a few days now. The headline alone was enough to leave a tight knot in his throat, and a swell of tears threatening to bowl over. It took him a long moment before he could make his hand move to scroll down to the rest of the story.

From behind the sports section, Josh opened his mouth to say something. He opened and closed the newspaper in his hands a few times. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, before finally saying, in the calmest, most no-big-deal tone he could manage, “Have you thought about running?”

Silence. He swallowed his breath, trying not to look over at Sam, trying to stay nonchalant. The last thing he wanted to do was make Sam feel like he _had_ to run. Because Josh did think he _had_ to run. But it needed to come from Sam. It needed to come from that place in Sam that had gone ahead and run in the California 47th. It needed to come from that place in Sam that had leapt out the door after a rain-drenched Josh fresh from New Hampshire. It needed to come from Sam or it wouldn’t happen at all.

            “I mean, I know it’s crossed your mind, but have you thought about it in, y’know… terms,” Josh asked, still pretending to read the paper. The silence that crept in and around them like a smoke cloud gave Josh the chance to picture it. To picture Sam on the road, the grey speckles at his temples making him look even more distinguished as addressed crowds, talked to voters, and poured over briefings, and then, behind the resolute desk, walking into the situation room, on the Senate floor delivering the State of the Union. He wondered what that would feel like, to walk out of their townhouse one day, to walk away from this little life they had been building together and be back in the thick of it, back where it happened. He wondered if that’s what Sam was wondering right now, too.

 When he finally turned to his husband, his heart lurched. Thin lines of silent tears trailed down Sam’s cheeks from his big blue eyes that read the article in front of him. He clutched the collar of his sweatshirt, his eyebrows twisted in sorrow.

            “What’s the matter?” Josh jolted up instinctively, a hand flying to his own silvery curls, scanning Sam’s face to discern if he had said the wrong thing. He watched, scratching his head, as Sam finished the article.

            “Sam?” Josh asked lightly.

Sam turned the computer around slowly this time, tugging off his glasses and wiping his nose with his sleeve. Josh took in the headline of the article Sam had been reading, the CNN article, and he felt himself blinking back tears in his own, brown eyes. 

_8-year-old Guatemalan boy dies in US custody on Christmas Eve._

Josh let out a long, faltering exhale from a puff of air in his cheeks. He pulled his eyes up to meet Sam’s, which were still watery with tears, but there was something else gleaming in them now. Something Josh recognized. Something that made his heart beat rhythmically, like rain water on the New York City streets.

            “I’m gonna run,” Sam said in a low, deliberate tone, “And I’m gonna win.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously none of the characters belong to me.
> 
> Title from "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits (should be familiar) which also obviously doesn't belong to me.
> 
> Seaborn for America 2020!!!!
> 
> This is my first posted work, so I would love your feedback! :)


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